We’ve got all kinds of business in California this month, so we’ve followed the sunshine and flown west. Picked up California 101 for a road trip down Route 1. Historian Kevin Starr passed away last year, but left behind a ton of superb reads about his native state. This one explores how the Golden State went from sparsely populated no-man’s land to become the world’s fifth-largest economy - quite the Hollywood ending!

Late to the party on this, but it’s as much bonkers fun as the movie. Pick it up for a romp through the world of private jets, mega mansions, and Paris couture. Keep it for the Urban Dictionary-style definitions of salty Singaporean slang, plus lines like, “Trump, the fattest of the three Pekingese, waddled into the foyer.” Arf.

Put the whole back-to-school extravaganza in perspective with Tara Westover. She spent her childhood on a junk yard in rural Idaho without setting foot in a school, at the mercy of her violent brother and a bi-polar survivalist dad. She now has a doctorate from Cambridge and the journey she documents in this extraordinary memoir will blow your mind. The power of resilience and resourcefulness shouldn’t be underestimated.

It’s the last local beach weekend, so here’s some nice shells. Oh, and eight powerful short stories from the Pulitzer prize-winning author of “All The Light We Cannot See”. The majesty of the natural world in each tale is matched only by the exquisite language and the force of human emotions. Passion, love, grief and guilt, from the Kenyan bush to the Pacific Coast, the myth-like tales in this book are even more beautiful than the cover.

Couple of beach reads for anyone with a bit of vacation time still in play. Both involve folks getting into some pretty dire scrapes on overseas trips. In “Something in the Water” it’s a well-heeled British couple who get into some serious bother in Bora Bora. In “Do Not Become Alarmed” a group of Americans lose their kids in Central America. Not the most relaxing reads, but you can take comfort that your vacation, wherever it may be, will turn out much better than theirs.

My own ‘summer of impossible things’ would banish bitey insects, make sunscreen apply itself, and have everyday be sunny and high 70s. This book does none of those things. Instead, two grieving sisters turn up in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where they uncover the traumatic event that shaped their late mother’s life, then try to change it BEFORE it happens. Whoa, time travel. It’s a twisty-turny, mind-bending delight.
#fridayreads #goodreads #summerfridays #instabook #bookstagram #readthis #bibliophile #booklover #booklife #pageturner #womenwhowrite #rowancoleman #thesummerofimpossiblethings

Spent the last two weeks binge-watching seasons 1 and 2 of #thehandmaidstale on @hulu because nothing says ‘yay, summer’ like a brutal, dystopian drama. Even @parkerjd13 is into it (but needs to stop calling me OfJD). The show’s massive success is a testament to the power of the book, which was written in 1986, but hasn’t aged a day. The mark of a true classic. Margaret Atwood, I salute you.
#fridayreads #goodreads #summerfridays #instabook #bookstagram #readthis #bibliophile #booklover #booklife #dystopianfiction #womenwhowrite #classicbooks

The winners are in for our 10th Annual WFCC awards. Congratulations to all!

The Women Film Critics Circle is an association of sixty-five
women film critics and scholars from around the country and
internationally, who are involved in print, radio, online and TV
broadcast media. We came together in 2004 to form the first women
critics organization in the United States, in the belief that women’s
perspectives and voices in film criticism need to be recognized fully.

BEST THEATRICALLY UNRELEASED MOVIE BY OR ABOUT WOMEN
BessieBEST EQUALITY OF THE SEXESTIE: Mad Max, FuryBEST ANIMATED FEMALE
Joy, Amy Poehler: Inside Out

BEST FAMILY FILM
Inside OutWOMEN’S WORK/BEST ENSEMBLE
Suffragette

*SPECIAL MENTION AWARDS*

COURAGE IN
FILMMAKING
Sarah Gavron: Suffragette*ADRIENNE SHELLY AWARD: A film that most passionately opposes violence against women
He Named Me Malala *JOSEPHINE BAKER AWARD: For best expressing the woman of color experience in America
What Happened, Miss Simone?*KAREN MORLEY AWARD: For best exemplifying a woman’s place in history or society, and a courageous search for identity
Suffragette

ACTING AND ACTIVISM AWARDOlivia Wilde: For her work with Save The Children, ACLU, and
Artists For Peace. And her support for holistic organic causes needed
for the sustenance of every community.

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD:
Lili Tomlin

COURAGE IN ACTING: [Taking on unconventional roles that radically redefine the images of women on screen]
Brie Larson: Room

BEST FEMALE ACTION STAR
Charlize Theron, Mad Max: Fury Road

THE INVISIBLE WOMAN AWARD: [Performance by a woman
whose exceptional impact on the film dramatically, socially or
historically, has been ignored]
Alicia Vikander; The Danish Girl

MOMMIE DEAREST WORST SCREEN MOM OF THE YEAR AWARD:

Cate Blanchett: Cinderella

**ADRIENNE SHELLY AWARD: Adrienne Shelly was a promising actress and
filmmaker who was brutally strangled in her apartment in 2006 at the age
of forty by a construction worker in the building, after she complained
about noise. Her killer tried to cover up his crime by hanging her from
a shower rack in her bathroom, to make it look like a suicide. He
later confessed that he was having a “bad day.” Shelly, who left behind a
baby daughter, had just completed her film Waitress, which she also
starred in, and which was honored at Sundance after her death.**JOSEPHINE BAKER AWARD: The daughter of a laundress and a musician,
Baker overcame being born black, female and poor, and marriage at age
fifteen, to become an internationally acclaimed legendary performer,
starring in the films Princess Tam Tam, Moulin Rouge and Zou Zou. She
also survived the race riots in East St. Louis, Illinois as a child, and
later expatriated to France to escape US racism. After participating
heroically in the underground French Resistance during WWII, Baker
returned to the US where she was a crusader for racial equality. Her
activism led to attacks against her by reporter Walter Winchell who
denounced her as a communist, leading her to wage a battle against him.
Baker was instrumental in ending segregation in many theaters and clubs,
where she refused to perform unless integration was implemented.

**KAREN MORLEY AWARD: Karen Morley was a promising Hollywood star in
the 1930s, in such films as Mata Hari and Our Daily Bread. She was
driven out of Hollywood for her leftist political convictions by the
Blacklist and for refusing to testify against other actors, while Robert
Taylor and Sterling Hayden were informants against her. And also for
daring to have a child and become a mother, unacceptable for female
stars in those days. Morley maintained her militant political activism
for the rest of her life, running for Lieutenant Governor on the
American Labor Party ticket in 1954. She passed away in 2003,
unrepentant to the end, at the age of 93.